King: It’s time to get serious about hurricane threat

King: It’s time to get serious about hurricane threat

BILL KING

Updated 5:30 am, Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Last week, to mark the beginning of hurricane season, the Chronicle's science reporter, Eric Berger, wrote an article in which he reported how little has been done to reduce the area's vulnerability to a major hurricane since Ike. Also, Phil Bedient and James Blackburn of Rice's Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center, a severe-storm think tank, made the case in an op-ed for greater efforts to reduce the area's vulnerability to hurricanes.

There has been a good deal of negative or skeptical reaction to their calls for action. This reaction has mostly fallen in two categories.

First, there are those who do not live close to the shore who argue that the costs of such projects are not justified to protect primarily beach homes, which they argue should never have been built in such vulnerable areas in the first place. And if that were to be the objective of hurricane-mitigation projects, I would agree.

But while such sentiments have a certain popular appeal, they miss the point that hurricane-mitigation efforts have little to do with beach homes. There is actually little that can be done to protect homes directly on the beach. In fact, all of the surge-protection concepts that have surfaced to date, like Bill Merrill's proposed Ike Dike, would be constructed behind beach-front homes, providing them no protection.

But hurricanes do not stop at the beach. The effects of a major storm will be felt over a wide area in many ways.

First, the hurricane-surge area is huge. Because we live on a flat coastal plain with an elongated continental shelf, we are particularly vulnerable to storm surges that can extend many miles inland. For a Category 5 storm, the projected surge area covers nearly all of Galveston County, about 60 percent of Brazoria County and 20 percent of Harris County. In this area are the homes of almost 1 million people, along with thousands of schools, churches and hospitals.

There are also major employment centers like the plants along the banks of the Houston Ship Channel, UTMB, NASA's Johnson Space Center and the ports of Galveston and Texas City. It includes refineries that produce a large percentage of the country's gasoline and jet fuel. A major storm that flooded this entire area would have devastating economic repercussions throughout the entire Houston region and the nation. Gas prices would soar. Tens of thousands would be out of work for months, affecting every business in the region.

There are also very troubling potential environmental impacts. This region is chock-full of hazardous waste sites, including several Superfund sites. At least one of these in the Texas City area is only surrounded by a 14-foot levee. A storm surge that overtops a number of these waste sites and spreads their materials over hundreds of square miles could have long-term, devastating effects on the entire region.

If you live in west Harris County and think that a major hurricane will not affect your life just because your home will not flood from the storm surge, trust me, you are wrong.

There were also those who expressed a fatalistic viewpoint, basically arguing that you cannot fight nature. But we know that is not true. The Dutch have been doing it successfully for hundreds of years. Also, coastal cities all around the globe are proactively dealing with the threat of storm flooding. The fact that Houston is one of few vulnerable cities in the world that is not doing anything to protect itself is anathema to our civic heritage.

There is, however, considerable room for reasonable disagreement about what we should do. Scientists at Texas A&M at Galveston and Rice as well as others have been studying the issue. Many alternatives, both structural and nonstructural, have been discussed.

Also, we should recognize that storm-surge-mitigation efforts should not be the sole focus. The studies that looked at the economic impact of Ike suggest that the fact that much of the city had no electricity for weeks may have taken the largest economic toll. So hardening the electrical grid must also be on the table. There are also issues around upland flooding of bayous, which could occur many miles from where storm-surge stops.

How we approach this issue will probably be the most important decision our region will make in this century. We certainly should take our time and be deliberate in the process and make sure we get this right. Any investment must be judged by a rigorous cost-benefit analysis and, as a matter of equity, those who benefit the most from any improvements should pay the largest share of the costs.

But the problem is complacency. And every year that passes without a major storm event, our complacency will tend to grow.

In the first half of the 20th century, the Dutch, distracted by two world wars, let down their defenses against the North Sea. As a result, in 1953, a major storm flooded nearly 500 square miles and killed almost 2,000 people. It was only then that the Dutch reinvigorated their commitment to protect their country from the ravages of the North Sea.

Had Ike made landfall 30 miles to 40 miles farther down the Texas coast, the resulting disaster would have made the 1953 Dutch storm look tame by comparison. There would have been many more casualties and a much larger area flooded. I pray that we will not have to suffer such a tragedy to shake us out of our lethargy with respect to this threat.

King is a frequent contributor to Outlook. His email address is BKing@weking.net.